[WILF] Ursula K. Le Guin & Sharp Pointy Sticks
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Welcome to What I Learned From…, a curious little newsletter full of essays, advice, and rabbit holes for writers who want to sharpen their craft without losing their edge. If someone forwarded this because they think you're one of us, they’re probably right. You can subscribe here. “The world is a woven basket. Every stitch counts.” ― A.D. Posey What I Learned From …What if the first human tool wasn’t a weapon? Not a spear, not a blade, not something to stab or slice or conquer. What if it was a vessel? A net, a cupped palm, a bag. Something not made to dominate, but to hold? That’s the question Ursula K. Le Guin asks in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. See, there is a story we have been told about stories. It goes like this: Conflict is king. The hero marches. The monster falls. The spear flies straight. Le Guin’s theory is more than literary critique. It is an act of reclamation, a refusal to let history be written solely by the victors. In fact, she argues that these oldest stories were never about heroes. They were about the work of continuance: the gathering of seeds, the mending of nets, the quiet labor of keeping alive. We know the shape of hero stories because we’ve been fed them incessantly. Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. The lone warrior. The decisive blow. The narrative arc that climbs, crests, and conquers. This is the way “a good story” gets told. But for every myth about a mammoth hunt, there were ten thousand untold days of carrying water, grinding grain, teaching children which mushrooms would not kill them. Because it is really important to teach the children which mushrooms will kill them. No one celebrates the storyteller who kept the kids alive. Just the one who scared off that dragon once. “A book holds words. Words hold things,” she wrote. “They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.” We use the carrier bag to collect and hold, rather than to shout and attack. It’s a form that allows for multiplicity, for fragments, for the unheroic and the unfinished. To embrace this is to resist the cult of triumph. In May, I ran my first 5K in decades. Training for months to be able to finish, hoping I didn’t come in dead last or puke at the feet of the PTA at my niece’s school. Added bonus if I could finish in under 50 minutes, which was my current Personal Best time. I crossed the line at 48:30, smiling and sweat-soaked and surprisingly still steady on my feet. Definitely didn’t win. Heck, I landed on the last page of the race results (but hey, not dead last and no vomit!) The responses were immediate: “You DID win!” “Don’t sell yourself short!” “Just finishing is winning!” “This is what victory looks like!” They meant well. I appreciated the pep in their hype squad mobilization. Something about the insistence that it had to be reframed as a victory stuck with me. Like the act itself—of showing up, running, finishing—wasn’t quite enough unless it could be crowned. Maybe they thought I wasn’t proud, so they needed to remind me I should be? This reflex is everywhere. We reframe resilience as victory, process only for a payoff. But Le Guin’s work asks: What are we losing when we demand that everything be a spear-story? But that’s not life. “The story isn’t over. There are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag for stars.” Things happen after the happily every after. Cue the montage music? Nah, life’s not a movie. It’s a junk drawer with good lighting. Le Guin’s genius was in recognizing that form shapes values. When we insist stories must have heroes, we imply that life must have them too. We are, all of us, inheritors of the carrier bag. Every time we:
We’ve always collected things. Oats and berries, sure. But also the first mile I ran without stopping. The article that didn’t go anywhere, but still felt good in my hands. Mornings when the light is weird and beautiful, client notes that say, “You helped me believe in this again,” and scraps of ideas that haven’t found their final shape but are still worth carrying. That’s what Le Guin gave us: A blueprint for another kind of narrative. One that mirrors what people actually do and feel and carry. It’s not a journey with a clear beginning and end. It’s a collection that’s always being edited and added to. Some days it’s brilliant and breathtaking. Some days it’s messy and breaking. But it’s all worth holding. I don’t need my 5K to be a win. Every piece you publish doesn’t have to be a mic drop. Not everything needs a podium. Some things just need a shelf, or a fridge door (held up by a crooked magnet from your dentist.) We need it all to be real, to live together in the same bag. The slow drafts and the powerful ones. The quiet moments and the radiant ones. Achievements don’t need to be wins to be worthy, and stories don't need to conquer to matter. Previously in This Writing Life …All the good stuff you were meant to see but probably didn’t.
Thought Threads …For when you want to tug at the edges of your own thinking.
Notes from the Masters …Craft advice that holds up, straight from the ones who lived it. “If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or a leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag or basket, a container for people… then that’s what writing is.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction Glossary of The Forgotten …Because life’s too chaotic for bland words. Fardel [fahr-dl] (n.) — From Middle English fardel (“a fourth part,” later “a bundle”), borrowed from Old French fardel (literally “little pack”), rooted in Medieval Latin fardellus, a diminutive of Arabic farda (“a piece or parcel”). Whew! Originally, it was a term for a traveler’s allotted burden: the exact weight a pilgrim could carry without breaking their back. By the 15th century, it meant the literal and figurative load: wool sacks, grief, or the three spare buttons your great-aunt insisted you keep “just in case.” Sorta synonyms: burden, bundle, emotional baggage Use it for: That beautifully messy mix of drafts, unresolved feelings, and “I’ll deal with this later” receipts that somehow come due at the worst time. Try This Thing …No promises. Just a potentially brilliant shortcut or two. Thriftbooks Stock up on essays, folklore, and forgotten voices without breaking the book-buying bank. ThriftBooks is where literary scavengers thrive. (Bonus, they sell new & used!) The Final Chuckle …Serious writing deserves unserious endings. They’ve stolen the best parts from childhood! ‘Til next time ~ Elisa PS – We don’t need a spear to grow this thing. Just one new reader who collects essays like foraged berries. If you could, send it to a friend who might be one of us. |